Winners of Worldwide Writers and Illustrators of the Future Contest Will Celebrate the 28th Year of the L. Ron Hubbard Awards

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Legendary Wilshire Ebell Theatre and Club is the Site of This Year's Gala

"People have called it the American Idol for writers, even though it is international."

Hollywood, CA (PRWEB)February 02, 2012

The 28th anniversary of the L. Ron Hubbard Awards for winners of the internationally-acclaimed Writers and Illustrators of the Future Contests will be held in Los Angeles at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre on Sunday, April 15th, it was announced today by contest organizers.

Celebrities and luminaries from around the world of science, science fiction and fantasy are expected to attend the gala event.

The theme of the evening will be “Celebrating 28 Years of Helping New Writers and Artists” to honor the 24 winners of the 2011-12 annual contest traveling from as far away as Australia for one of the writer winners and Sweden for one of the illustrator winners. Other winners this year are from Canada and across the United States.

“Cash prizes of $10,000.00 for the grand prize winners alone and inclusion in the 28th annual “L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future” anthology (Galaxy Press, 2012) make this a very special night,” Joni Labaqui, director of the contest said. Presentation of the Gold Awards for the year’s best story and illustration will culminate the evening.

The Writers of the Future Contest and the companion anthology were created by L. Ron Hubbard 28 years ago to help discover new, aspiring writers of speculative fiction and give their best work a high-profile publishing showcase.

To date, the Contests have given rise to dozens of flourishing careers, including New York Times bestsellers Dave Wolverton (On My Way to Paradise) , Sean Williams (Star Wars - The Force Unleashed), Karen Joy Fowler (Jane Austin Book Club), Patrick Rothfuss (The Wise Man's Fear), Nancy Farmer (The Ear, the Eye and the Arm), Jo Beverley (A Lady’s Secret), Lisa Smedman (Extinction) and Tim Myers (Basho and the Fox).

Also, bestsellers such as Dean Wesley Smith (Men In Black), contest winner turned judge, after pumping out over 100 novels, are part of the contests stream of success stories.

Winning authors from past years of the Writers of the Future Contest have sold over 700 novels and over 3,000 short stories in science fiction and fantasy genres. Several past winners have gone on to write in other genres, for the theatre, as well as for TV and movies. Winning illustrators have created artwork for 31 major motion pictures, numerous TV shows, over 500 book covers, covers and story illustrations in magazines, and industrial design. One winner won the Academy Award last year for his animated short film, The Lost Thing.

“The Contests’ successes – most prominently defined by those writers who have ‘made it’ – have left a significant and meaningful mark on the speculative fiction genre and on other aspects of contemporary fiction and the arts,” Labaqui added. "People have called it 'the American Idol for writers', even though it is international."